Take Control of Your Digital Photos

Are you drowning in a sea of digital photos? Unable to find the shots you’re looking for, or to stay on top of managing all the photos you’re taking? Digital photography expert Jeff Carlson gives you a plan for tackling this problem, starting with preparing your camera ahead of time, then choosing the right app to manage your photos, judging and organizing your photos, and backing up your photos for safekeeping.

In this book—an expanded and updated version of Take Control of Your Digital Photos on a Mac—Jeff extends his advice to cover both Mac and Windows users, and to address a broader range of photo management apps: Photos from Apple, Lightroom Classic CC, Lightroom CC, Photoshop Elements, and Mylio.

Get started with the minimum amount of work: Take advantage of software intelligence to do some of the categorizing work for you, and find out how you can accomplish some tasks even if you have little time.

Prep your camera: Learn four actions you can take before you head out the door that will make things easier after you return with new pictures.

Get your app together: Decide which app you’ll use to organize your digital photos, compare popular choices and find out Jeff’s recommended application.

Import the right way: Learn how to assign valuable metadata to all images that come in during the import stage.

Apply keywords and metadata: Take a second pass on applying keywords to individual shots (after starting the process during import), learn how to apply geotags using GPS data from external devices (like an iPhone), and use facial recognition to collect shots of specific friends and family members.

Go mobile: Find the right online service for making your photos available on mobile devices, based on your needs and which desktop photo management app you use.

Protect your photos: Learn how to implement a backup strategy that will preserve all your data, not just your photos, and how to archive photos for the future.

“After 20 years of struggling to stay on top of family photos I now have an effective workflow, tagging strategy, and storage. I’m back in love with photography thanks to your eBook.” —Tony Stevenson

What's New

The world of photo software continues to change in dramatic ways. And with this revision, so has this book: it’s effectively a new edition of Take Control of Your Digital Photos on a Mac, but it was renamed to reflect the fact that it’s not longer limited to macOS (see the second bullet point ahead). Here’s how these changes are reflected in this edition:

Nearly every chapter of the book has been updated to include information about the new Lightroom CC application that Adobe introduced in late 2017, as well as the rebranding of its predecessor as Lightroom Classic CC

In general, the book is more Windows-friendly, since photo management isn’t platform-specific. Aside from Photos for Mac, all the software discussed runs on both macOS and Windows

Added Mylio to the list of applications to consider

Added Photoshop Elements to the chapter about how to Take Advantage of Software Intelligence

New explanation of how photos imported into Lightroom Mobile apps and synced to Lightroom Classic CC are stored differently than images imported directly into Lightroom Classic CC

Expanded and updated section on Lightroom Mobile within the Go Mobile with Online Photo Services topic

Added information on Merging Tracking Data in Windows, including how to record a geotracked trail and match up locations with specific photos by their timestamps

FAQ

What versions of software are described in this book?

The text was written based on the latest versions of Photos for Mac (3.0), Lightroom CC (2017), and Photoshop Elements (2018) in February 2018.

Jeff Carlson is a contributing editor of TidBITS, a columnist for the Seattle Times, a frequent contributor to Macworld, and the author of best-selling books on the Mac, video editing, digital photography, and, in earlier incarnations, Web design and Palm organizers. He consumes almost too much coffee. Almost.

WANT TO SAVE 30%? PUT THREE OR MORE BOOKS IN YOUR CART!

Click the Buy button for each, notice the CPN90603BYOB coupon in the cart, and then click Check Out.